Faculty Update: Logistics for Spring Teaching

Dear Faculty Colleagues:

It feels like we have been managing the issues connected to the COVID-19 pandemic for months, and to some degree we have been. But our challenges accelerated 13 days ago when we decided to start spring break early and make plans to teach remotely. We know all of you have been scrambling to figure out how to teach remotely. Thank you for these efforts, which have required you to completely rethink how you have done your job for a year, or how you have done it for years or decades. This has been challenging for all of us.

We now need to pivot from focusing exclusively on short-term issues to focusing on both those issues and the medium term. We wanted to let you know our current thinking on a number of short- and medium-term effects, acknowledging, again, that we’ve not thought of everything. And we encourage you to bring issues that we do not discuss here to us; crowdsourcing the concerns of the faculty is something we welcome.

Access to campus buildings: As you saw in the note from Director of Public Safety Lisa Burchard on Friday, most buildings on campus are now locked, though colleagues who have offices in those buildings continue to have access to them. That said, we strongly urge everyone who can to work from home. We recognize that some faculty colleagues do not have adequate Internet or other resources at home to do what they need to do to teach; if that is the case, you can use your office, but please engage in social distancing practices if you do. If we are required (by the Vermont Department of Health, for example) to take more extreme measures and more dramatically restrict access to campus buildings, we may need to set up new systems to provide colleagues access to them, on a rotating basis, to provide for academic continuity. We will let you know if that needs to happen, but it adds to the reasons for you to think through how you would continue your classes remotely if things change.

Support for remote teaching: We know that many of you have connected with DLINQ and other resources over the last week and a half as you have prepared to teach remotely. We know that many of you will continue to do that this week. We just wanted to take this opportunity to thank those colleagues, in DLINQ and ITS and the library and CTLR, who have gone above and beyond; without them, we would not be able to pull off this transition. DLINQ is offering another slate of workshops this week; you can view and RSVP for those workshops here. You can also request a DLINQ consultation for additional support.

Course scheduling: Last week we shared with you the revised course schedule that we will use while faculty are teaching remotely. For all but the evening courses, we have moved “available meeting times” by two hours (think of this as teaching on a Mountain Time schedule). While we encourage you to practice asynchronous teaching, please be mindful of this schedule for any times you expect to do synchronous work with your students. As is true during the regular semester, students cannot have overlapping courses. Please do not change your class meeting times outside of those assigned by the revised course schedule. We want to ensure our students’ learning in these difficult times.

Planning the rest of the semester:  We are rapidly working to prepare for next week, when we begin remote teaching. And as we do this, we are thinking about our own teaching, as we should. But we should also think about the teaching of our colleagues; it is entirely plausible that one of us could fall ill for an extended period and be unable to carry out teaching responsibilities. We ask that departments and programs think through a Plan B, focusing in particular on what you would do in the case that faculty colleagues fall ill. Consider as well how we can remain attentive to each other’s changing needs as our work-life lives are radically dismantled and restructured.

Continuing the semester: We understand that everyone is eager to know whether we are going to finish the semester by teaching remotely, or if there is a chance that students will be able to come back on campus at some point this spring. We are continuing to monitor a fluid situation and will make these decisions over the course of the next week or so, and will let you know as soon as we have made them.

Please note that we are also going to be making decisions for our summer students (Language Schools, Bread Loaf School of English, Bread Loaf Writers’ Conferences, and summer programs at the Institute in Monterey) in upcoming weeks as well.

Our students: We were on a Zoom meeting with our NESCAC academic counterparts on Friday, and we were discussing how our colleges were communicating with our students. We know you are communicating with your students as we get ready for the rest of the semester, and there was one phrase in particular that struck us: this is a “moment of generosity” for us, as faculty. We are even less familiar than we normally are with the situations of our students, and many of them are working through very challenging circumstances. They will be facing new ways of learning, as we will be facing new ways of teaching. We should all cut them and ourselves a break right now. Vice President for Student Affairs Baishakhi Taylor and her team have been working intensively with our students to support them during this transition. DLINQ invites us to consider Continuity with Care and has created a suite of resources and support for students who will be learning in these unfamiliar modalities. CTLR is also working to ensure that our students continue to have access to peer tutoring services.

Budgets for this and next year: The ongoing pandemic is going to have a significant effect on the broader economy, and on Middlebury’s budget this year and next. Our colleagues in the finance office are modeling the impacts, and they will be significant. We have two general pleas: stop spending money this fiscal year that is not essential. And think about what you can do for next fiscal year to reduce spending; if you have any ideas about how you and others could reduce spending, please send them our way.

Committee work: We expect that faculty committee work will continue, as appropriate, and when necessary. Of course, all meetings will be virtual. Schedules for committee meetings may need to change to Mountain Time, especially considering the changes in the academic schedule.

How can we help?  We know that faculty members and staff colleagues want to know what they can do to help our community in these challenging times. We’ve heard from a number of you with this question, precisely, with suggestions about what you might do. In some case, these ideas have come from faculty colleagues on leave, who want to chip in now. We welcome these offers, especially knowing the challenges faculty are facing as they remake their classes. We would welcome any and all ideas. Please send them to us at provost@middlebury.edu.

Finally, we know these are extraordinary times. They are likely to become more extraordinary still.  We are happy to know that we have extraordinary colleagues, too.

Sincerely, and thank you,

Jeff Cason

Provost

Sujata Moorti

Vice President for Academic Affairs and Dean of the Faculty